Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin

THE STEPPING STONE
JOACHIM KURTZ
Joachim Kurtz was born in 1968, in Issum, Germany. He is Professor of Zoology at the
University of Münster. He studied Biology at the Universities of Göttingen, Cologne and
Bonn. After several years as a postdoctoral scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Limnology
in Plön, he worked as a scientist at the ETH Zürich, Switzerland. He has published
in an interdisciplinary area of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Immunology. As a member
of the “Faculty of 1000 Biology” and by organising several conferences, he has helped
shape the field of “Evolutionary Immunology”. – Address: University of Münster, Institute
for Evolution and Biodiversity, Hüfferstr. 1, 48149 Münster.
Conservation biologists are fond of “stepping stones”. These are small habitats helping endangered
species to survive in an increasingly damaged and polluted environment that is
over-used by human economic activity. Like protected islands in an otherwise rough and
inhospitable milieu, stepping stones provide these frightened creatures with a retreat area
to recover and refuel energy for their next big step.
The Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin also protects an endangered species: The scientist –
as a thinker! Nowadays a scientist’s life seems to be increasingly indistinguishable from the
life of a businessman. The modern scientist appears to be constantly hunting for research
money, trying to sell scientific results in high-impact journals and juggling with terms that
become more and more indistinguishable from the stock market report. Time to think is
becoming rare … What a pleasant difference at the Wissenschaftskolleg!
For me personally, the Wissenschaftskolleg was a stepping stone in an even more concrete
way: I was migrating from the ETH Zürich, Switzerland, to a new professorship at
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